I was reading the weapon balance update and how it has made short-range WMD weapons more attractive compared to stand-off attacks with missiles and howitzers. It's good, but it doesn't solve what the major balance issue is for me. Short range weapons are dangerous to kill stations with. Missiles are not.

If you're using a short range-weapon, you want to keep moving to try and lessen the number of hits you take, or attack at a good speed to reduce the amount of incoming fire as you close. What this means is that you have a significant risk of getting killed by the blast of large stations like the Sung Citadel, especially if allies or stray hits land an unexpected killing blow.

Making stand-off weapons weaker just means you spend more time on the boring but safe approach. This is especially annoying when you've killed all the escort ships but then whoops, you were too close while playing can-opener. It's also unclear for a new player which stations are secretly nuclear landmines, so that further encourages killing all stations at maximum range.

Which can be contrasted with capital ships, where ones that have fragmentation weapons encourage you to hug close to them in order to avoid the frags going off. It's a strategy with some risk, and some skill needed, but it's both entertaining and useful.

Maybe exploding stations could do an EMP blast or something less immediately lethal, to give you time to pull out Domina powers, halo gems or other escape tricks. Or be toned down to be in line with a missile strike rather than enough to one-shot armour sections.

I can't say as I've had trouble with base explosions, except for the one time I decided to destroy a Sung Citadel without shattering any of its "barricades" first. Turns out that sitting directly on top of a citadel when it explodes is hazardous to your health.

Otherwise, you shouldn't need to be so close to a base that its explosion does lethal damage to you.